The US under the “Dubya” Bush regime does not commit the
very worst human rights violations in the world, but, because it is
the most influential country, and the one which most loudly proclaims
its alleged commitment to freedom and democracy, its human rights
violations, which are well publicized and shocking enough, have the
most damaging effect worldwide.

2000 Iranian state radio announced that former President
Hashemi Rafsanjani had resigned from the incoming parliament, depriving
hard-liners of a leading figure in the power struggle between conservatives
and reformists.2000 The US government proposed a
rating system telling consumers how prone vehicles are to rolling over

^1994 First International
World Wide Web Conference
opens at CERN, the European Particle Physics Lab in Geneva. The two-day
conference was heavily oversubscribed: Some eight hundred people applied,
but only four hundred were admitted. Sometimes referred to as the
"Woodstock of the Web," the conference generated new directions for
the Internet. The Web had evolved
at CERN under the guidance of British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee,
who had started work in 1989 on a hypertext system that would enable
documents to "link" to each other easily. By 1990, he had created
the basic structure of the World Wide Web, which was posted on the
Internet in the summer of 1991.
Berners-Lee continued to develop the Web through 1993, working with
feedback from Internet users. By late 1991 and early 1992, the Web
was widely discussed, and in early 1993, Marc Andreessen and other
computer graduate students at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications at the University of Illinois released the Mosaic browser,
Netscape's precursor.

1994 The media report that Compaq Computer Corporation
had unseated IBM and Apple as the world's leading computer seller. Compaq
would retain its lead position throughout the rest of the decade. Compaq's
US market share reached 12.4%, beating out Apple's top ranking: Apple's
share slipped from 13.5% to 10.4%. Apple's decline in market share would
continue, dwindling to 3% by 1997.

^
1977 Chinese government removes ban
on Shakespeare
A new sign of political liberalization appears in China, when the
communist government lifts its decade-old ban on the writings of William
Shakespeare. The action by the Chinese government was additional evidence
that the Cultural Revolution was over. In 1966, Mao Tse-Tung, the
ruler of the People's Republic of China, announced a "Cultural Revolution,"
which was designed to restore communist revolutionary fervor and vigor
to Chinese society. His wife, Chiang Ching, was made the unofficial
secretary of culture for China. What the revolution meant in practice,
however, was the assassination of officials deemed to have lost their
dedication to the communist cause and the arrest and detention of
thousands of other officials and citizens for vaguely defined "crimes
against the state." It also meant the banning of any cultural work
 music, literature, film, or theater  that did not have
the required ideological content. By the early 1970s, however, China
was desperate to open new and improved relations with the West, particularly
the United States, partially because of its desire for new sources
of trade but also because of its increasing fear of confrontation
with the Soviet Union. President Richard Nixon's 1973 trip to China
was part of this campaign. In October 1976, the Cultural Revolution
was officially declared ended, and the May 1977 announcement of the
end of the ban on the works of William Shakespeare was clear evidence
of this. It was a move that cost little, but was sure to reap public
relations benefits with Western society that often looked askance
at China's puritanical and repressive cultural life. Together with
the announcement that the ban was lifted, the Chinese government also
stated that a Chinese-language edition of the Bard's works would soon
be available.

^
1975 Grizzly bear is classified
as a threatened species
The grizzly bear, once the undisputed king of the western wilderness
of North America, is given US federal protection as a threatened species
under the Endangered Species Act. Before the Anglo-Americans began
invading their territory, the grizzly bear inhabited most of the country
west of the Mississippi from Mexico north to the Arctic Circle. Its
only serious competitors for food were the Amerindians, who considered
it a sacred animal-although they did hunt the bear as a test of strength
and its long claws were prized symbols of status. Because of the grizzly's
fearsome size and aggressive nature, most early European explorers
of the West noted their encounters with the animal. During their expedition
to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark encountered many of the bears and
were awed by their impressive speed and power. On 01 July 1805, while
the expedition was making the slow portage around the Great Falls
of the Missouri River in Montana, Lewis wrote in his journal that
grizzlies were all around their camp. "We have therefore determined
to beat up their quarters tomorrow," he continued, "and kill them
or drive them from their haunts about this place."
Because of such hunting and the general
destruction of their habitat, the grizzly began to disappear in concert
with the settlement of the West. California, which is estimated to
have once been home to 10'000 grizzlies and placed the animal's image
on its state flag, no longer had any of the bears by 1924. During
subsequent decades, grizzlies gradually disappeared from their native
homes in Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon,
Utah, the Dakotas, and probably Colorado and Washington. Outside of
Alaska, by the 1970s small populations of bears remained only in a
few isolated wilderness areas and national parks in Montana, Wyoming,
and Idaho. In a last ditch effort to halt the decline, Congress designated
the grizzly a threatened species on this day in 1975. Protected from
hunting and trapping, grizzly populations have slowly begun to recover.
However, there are still probably fewer than 1000 grizzlies in the
lower 48 states today, nearly half of them in Glacier and Yellowstone
National Parks. Recently, plans to reintroduce the species into two
wilderness areas in Idaho and Washington have met with controversy.
The future of the grizzly bear will depend on human willingness to
share their habitats with the bears and set aside areas of wilderness
large enough for them to survive.

^1969 National Democratic
Front formed in Saigon
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu assumes personal leadership
of the National Social Democratic Front at its inaugural meeting in
Saigon. Thieu said the establishment of this coalition party was "the
first concrete step in unifying the political factions in South Vietnam
for the coming political struggle with the communists," and emphasized
that the new party would not be "totalitarian or despotic." The six
major parties comprising the NSDF coalition were: the Greater Union
Force, composed largely of militant Roman Catholic refugees from North
Vietnam; the Social Humanist Party, successor to the Can Lao party,
which had held power under the Ngo Dinh Diem regime; the Revolutionary
Dai Viet, created to fight the French; the Social Democratic Party,
a faction of the Hoa Hao religious sect; the United Vietnam Kuomintang,
formed as an anti-French party; and the People's Alliance for Social
Revolution, a pro-government bloc formed in 1968.

^1968 New Viet Cong offensive
on Saigon. The
Communists launch their third major assault of the year on Saigon.
The heaviest fighting occurred during the first three days of June,
and again centered on Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon, where
US and South Vietnamese forces used helicopters, fighter-bombers,
and tanks to dislodge deeply entrenched Viet Cong infiltrators. A
captured enemy directive, which the US command made public on 28 May,
indicated that the Viet Cong saw the offensive as a means of influencing
the Paris peace talks in their favor.

^1915 Coalition
government in UK. Herbert
Asquith was born in Morley, Yorkshire in 1852. Educated at the City
of London and Balliol College, Oxford,
he became a lawyer in 1876. In the 1886
General Election Asquith was elected as the Liberal
MP for East Fife. He was a member of the opposition for his first
six years in the House
of Commons but after the 1892
General Election, William
Gladstone formed a new Liberal administration. Gladstone had been
impressed by Asquith and appointed him as Home Secretary. Asquith
held the post until the Marquees
of Salisbury and the Conservatives
took power in 1895. The Liberals
were out of power until the 1906
General Election. The new Prime Minister, Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, gave Asquith the important post of Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Asquith's strong opposition to women's suffrage
made him extremely unpopular with the National
Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Suffragists were
particularly angry that the man who was responsible for deciding how
much tax they paid, should deny them political representation. Several
times in 1906, members of the Women's
Social and Political Union (WSPU) made attempts to disrupt meetings
where he was speaking. In April
1908, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigned and Asquith replaced him
as Prime Minister. Working closely with David
Lloyd George, his radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, Asquith
introduced a whole series of reforms including the Old
Age Pensions Act and the People's Budget that resulted to a conflict
with the House
of Lords. The Conservatives,
who had a large majority in the House of Lords, objected to this attempt
to redistribute wealth, and made it clear that they intended to block
these proposals. David Lloyd George reacted by touring the country
making speeches in working-class areas on behalf of the budget and
portraying the nobility as men who were using their privileged position
to stop the poor from receiving their old age pensions. After a long
struggle with the House of Lords Asquith and the Liberal government
finally got his budget through parliament.
With the House of Lords extremely unpopular with the British people,
the Liberal government decided to take action to reduce its powers.
The 1911
Parliament Act drastically cut the powers of the Lords. They were
no longer allowed to prevent the passage of 'money bills' and it also
restricted their ability to delay other legislation to three sessions
of parliament. When the House
of Lords attempted to stop this bill's passage, Asquith, appealed
to George
V for help. Asquith, who had just obtained a victory in the 1910
General Election, was in a strong position, and the king agreed
that if necessary he would create 250 new Liberal peers to remove
the Conservative majority in the Lords. Faced with the prospect of
a House of Lords with a permanent Liberal majority, the Conservatives
agreed to let the 1911 Parliament Act to become law.
Although several leading members of the government favored granting
women the vote, Asquith still opposed the measure. However, during
the 1910 General Election campaign Asquith announced that if he was
returned to power he would make sure that women with property would
get the franchise. When Asquith changed his mind in November 1911
and instead announced legislation that would enable all adult males
to vote, the WSPU organized a window breaking campaign including an
attack on Asquith's home. After
the outbreak of the First
World War Asquith made strenuous attempts to achieve political
solidarity and on 25 May 1915 Asquith forms a coalition government.
Gradually the Conservatives in the cabinet began to question Asquith's
abilities as a war leader. So also did
Lord Northcliffe, the powerful newspaper baron, and his newspapers,
The
Daily Mail and The
Times led the attack on Asquith. In December, 1916 David
Lloyd George agreed to collaborate with the Conservatives in the cabinet
to remove Asquith from power.
Lloyd George's decision to join the Conservatives in removing Herbert
Asquith split the Liberal Party. In the 1918
General Election, many Liberals supported candidates who remained
loyal to Asquith. Despite this, Lloyd George's Coalition group won
459 seats and had a large majority over the Labour
Party and the Liberal Party.
Asquith lost his seat in East Fife in 1918 and William Wedgwood Benn
led the groups opposed to Lloyd George's government. John
Benn, who was also opposed to Lloyd George, gave the group the
name, Wee Frees, after a small group of Free Church of Scotland members
who refused to accept the union of their church with the United Presbyterian
Church. The Conservative members
of the coalition government decided to replace David Lloyd George
with Andrew
Bonar Law in October, 1922. In the General Election that followed,
the Conservatives won 345 seats. Only 54 Liberals in the House of
Commons supported Lloyd George whereas Asquith had the support of
62 MPs. Asquith returned to the
House of Commons after the 1923
General Election when he was elected to represent Paisley. Herbert
Asquith, who was granted the title, the Earl of Oxford in 1925, died
in 1928.

^
1915 Germans abandon Ypres offensive.
Ypres, a medieval town in Belgium, was
taken by the German Army at the beginning of the war. However, by
early October, 1914, the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) was able to recapture the town. The
1st
Battle of Ypres took place between 15th October and 22nd November,
1914. It is estimated that about 135'000 Germans were killed or badly
wounded during this offensive.
In April, 1915, the German launched another major offensive at Ypres.
After a brief
preliminary bombardment, the Germans used chlorine
gas against the French and Algerian troops defending the area
north of the town. The troops fled in terror and left a 7 km gap in
the Allied line. Wearing primitive gas-masks, the Germans advanced
cautiously into the gap. The arrival of the British Second Army blocked
the German advance but the Allied forces had been disadvantaged by
the loss of the high ground north of Ypres.
Heavy fighting and frequent gas attacks continued around Ypres until
25th May. The Allied line held, but the German Fourth Army was able
to use its new higher positions to bombard the town with heavy
artillery. This inflicted heavy losses and Ypres was virtually
demolished by the German shells during this period.

1914 British House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule 
Irlanda obtiene un estatuto de autonomía limitada.1911
The "20 November 1910" revolution in Mexico finally overthrows
President Diaz

^1911 Thomas Mann gets
inspiration for Der
Tod in Venedig as he visits the Lido
Possibly modeled on Wagner [22
May 1813 – 13 Feb 1883] who died in Venice (of heart failure),
the main character of the novel, Gustav von Aschenbach, is an aging
German writer who is the paragon of solemn dignity and fastidious
self-discipline. Determinedly cerebral and duty-bound, he believes
that true art is produced only in "defiant despite" of corrupting
passions and physical weaknesses. When
Aschenbach has the urge to travel, he tells himself that he might
find artistic inspiration from a change of scene. Aschenbach's subsequent
trip to Venice is the first indulgence he has allowed himself in years;
it signals the beginning of his decline. Aschenbach allows the languid
Venetian atmosphere and gently rocking gondolas to lull him into a
defenseless state. At his hotel he notices an extremely beautiful
fourteen-year-old Polish boy named Tadzio, who is visiting with his
mother, sisters, and governess. At first, Aschenbach's interest in
the boy is purely aesthetic, or so he tells himself. However, he soon
falls deeply and obsessively in love with the boy, although the two
never have direct contact. Aschenbach
spends days on end watching Tadzio play on the beach, even following
his family around the streets of Venice. Cholera infects the city,
and although the authorities try to conceal the danger from the tourists,
Aschenbach soon learns the facts about the lethal epidemic. However,
he cannot bear to leave Tadzio and stays on in Venice. He becomes
progressively daring in his pursuit of the boy, gradually becoming
more and more debased, until he finally dies of the cholera, degraded,
a slave to his passions, stripped of his dignity.
Mann [06 Jun 1875 – 12 Aug 1955] was born in Germany, the second
son of a grain merchant who expected Thomas to take over the business.
His father died when Mann was 15, and his mother moved the family
to Munich. Mann worked as a clerk at an insurance company and studied
to become a journalist. In 1898, he published his first collection
of stories, followed by his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901),
the saga of a family's decline from wealth. He published two more
novellas, Tonio
Kröger and Tristan, in 1903.
Mann married in 1905 and later fathered six children. In 1912, his
novella Death in Venice was published. The story of a revered
German writer who chooses to stay in cholera-stricken Venice to gaze
on a beautiful young man he's never met, the book considers the dilemma
of the artist's position in society. Mann published numerous essays
about great thinkers like Freud, Goethe, and Nietzsche and continued
to write novels. In 1924, he published his acclaimed book The
Magic Mountain, the story of a young man who visits a tuberculosis
sanitorium and finds a microcosm of society.
Five years later, Mann
won the Nobel Prize. When Hitler came to power, Mann moved to
Switzerland, then to the US in 1938. Mann lived in Santa Monica, California,
from 1941 to 1953. His later work includes Joseph and His Brothers
(1934) and Doctor Faustus (1947). Mann
died in Switzerland in 1955. Other
works of Thomas Mann: Königliche Hoheit, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen,
1918, (Reflections of an Unpolitical Man), essays. Der Zauberberg,
1924, translated to The Magic Mountain, 1927, a novel, which won him
the Nobel Prize in 1929. Mario und der Zauberer, 1930, translated
to Mario and the Magician, 1934. Lotte in Weimar, 1939, a
novel. Appel an die Vermunft, 1930, translated to Appeal
to Reason, 1942, an essay. Achtung Europa! and Deutsche Hörer,
1945, collections of his anti-Hitler broadcasts to Germany. Leiden
und Gröbe der Meister, 1933, translated to The Sufferings and
Greatness of the Masters, 1947, literary essays. The Beloved Returns,
a novel. Die vertauschten Köpfe, 1940, translated to The
Transposed Heads, 1941, a short novel. Joseph and his Brothers, a
tetralogy of novels. Doktor Faustus, 1947, translated 1948,
a novel. Der Erwählte, 1951. Die Betrogene, 1953.
Bekenntnisse des Hochstapler's Felix Krull, Part I, 1954,
translated to Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man, 1955, a
novel. JOHN CAREY'S BOOKS OF THE CENTURY in The Sunday Times Books,
15th. August, 1999, page 7. "This is Thomas Mann's only comic novel.
It shares themes with his serious work, but surrounds them with mockery.
The effect is wonderfully enlivening - like chatting with a brainy
friend after he has had a few drinks." "Mann kept it by him for years,
adding to it from time to time, but never finished it. That is no
surprise. It is a novel you never want to stop reading, so stopping
writing it would surely have been a wrench." Last Essay, translated
1959. Sketch of My Life,
"Gustav von Aschenbach war etwas unter Mittelgröße, brünett,
rasiert. Sein Kopf erschien ein wenig zu groß im Verhältnis zu der
fast zierlichen Gestalt. Sein rückwärts gebürstetes Haar, am Scheitel
gelichtet, an den Schläfen sehr voll und stark ergraut, umrahmte eine
hohe, zerklüftete und gleichsam narbige Stirn. Der Bügel einer Goldbrille
mit randlosen Gläsern schnitt in die Wurzel der gedrungenen, edel
gebogenen Nase ein. Der Mund war groß, oft schlaff, oft plötzlich
schmal und gespannt; die Wangenpartie mager und gefurcht, das wohlausgebildete
Kinn weich gespalten. Bedeutende Schicksale schienen über dies meist
leidend seitwärts geneigte Haupt hinweggegangen zu sein, und doch
war die Kunst es gewesen, die hier jene physiognomische Durchbildung
übernommen hatte, welche sonst das Werk eines schweren bewegten Lebens
ist. ... Sie beglückt tiefer, sie verzehrt rascher. Sie gräbt in das
Antlitz ihres Dieners die Spuren imaginärer und geistiger Abenteuer,
und sie erzeugt, selbst bei klösterlicher Stille des äußeren Daseins,
auf die Dauer eine Verwöhntheit, Überfeinerung, Müdigkeit und Neugier
der Nerven, wie ein Leben voll ausschweifender Leidenschaften und
Genüsse sie kaum hervorzubringen vermag."  Thomas Mann:
Der Tod in Venedig, Zweites Kapitel

1883 Se establece en Alemania, por idea
de Otto von Bismarck, el Seguro de Enfermedad, con lo que este país se adelantó
a las demás naciones de Europa en materia social.1876
The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland (org. 1743) united with the
Free Church of Scotland (org. 1843) to form the new Free Church of Scotland.
(In 1929 the Free Church merged with the Mother Church, afterward retaining
the name Church of Scotland.)

^1870 Canada attacked
by Fenians John
O'Neill, 36, one of the top Fenian leaders, with his followers, attacks
Canada for the second time, after years of threatening to do so. Born
in Ireland, O'Neill had immigrated to the United States at the age
of 14. After serving as a Union cavalry officer during the US Civil
War, O'Neill settled in Tennessee. He became interested in the
Fenian scheme of capturing Canada and holding it hostage in order
to secure Irish freedom from Great Britain. O'Neill gathered troops
from his area and in 1866 led a Nashville detachment to Buffalo in
preparation for the assault on Canada. With 600 men he crossed the
Niagara River and took the Canadian village of Fort Erie. Before British
troops could retaliate, O'Neill's force defeated a group of Canadian
militiamen at the Battle of Limestone Ridge and fled back to the United
States. There he was arrested for violating the neutrality laws, but
the charges were dropped. The
Canadians repulsed O'Neill's 1870 raid along the Vermont border, O'Neill's
troops fled, and he was arrested by a US marshall. Convicted and sentenced
to two years in prison, O'Neill served only three months before being
pardoned by President Ulysses S. Grant.

^1862 First Battle
of Winchester, Virginia
Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson notches a victory on
his brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson, with 17'000
soldiers under his command, was sent to the Shenandoah to relieve
pressure on the Confederate troops near Richmond, who were facing
the growing force of George McClellan on the James Peninsula. In early
May, Jackson struck John C. Fremont's force at McDowell, in western
Virginia. After driving Fremont out of the area, Jackson turned his
attention to an army under the command of Nathaniel Banks, situated
at the north end of the Shenandoah Valley. With only 10,000 troops,
Banks had the unenviable task of holding off the fast-moving Jackson.
On 25 May, Jackson found Banks outside of Winchester. He attacked
the Union force but was initially repulsed. The Confederates then
struck each Union flank, and this time the Yankee line broke. A confused
retreat ensued through the town of Winchester, and even some residents
fired on the departing Yankees. Banks fled the Shenandoah into Maryland,
and Jackson continued his rampage. The Union lost 62 killed, 243 wounded,
and over 1700 captured or missing, while Jackson's men lost 68 killed
and 329 wounded. The numbers from Jackson's 1862 valley campaign are
stunning. His men marched 550 km in a month; occupied 60'000 Yankee
soldiers, preventing them from applying pressure on Richmond; won
four battles against three armies; and inflicted twice as many casualties
as they suffered. Jackson's record cemented his reputation as one
of the greatest generals of all time.

^1861 US President
Lincoln unconstitutionally suspends the writ of habeas corpus
During the US Civil War, John Merryman,
a state legislator from Maryland, is arrested for attempting to hinder
Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil
War and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney
immediately seeks a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court
could examine the charges. However, President Abraham Lincoln decides
to suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the general in command
of Fort McHenry refuses to turn Merryman over to the authorities.
Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief
justice of the Supreme Court (and also the author of the infamous
Dred Scott decision), issues a ruling that President Lincoln did not
have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn't respond,
appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech,
Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules
in order to put down the rebellion in the South.
Five years later, a new Supreme Court essentially backed Justice Taney's
ruling: In an unrelated case, the court held that only Congress could
suspend habeas corpus and that civilians were not subject to military
courts, even in times of war.
This was not the first or last time that the US federal government
willfully ignored its own laws during times of strife. In the worst
instance, hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were illegally
sent to concentration camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor and
the US's entry into World War II. The Supreme Court also condemned
this blatant violation of civil rights, but not until after all the
Japanese Americans had been released. Fifty years later, those held
in the internment camps were awarded some monetary compensation by
the US government

^1805 Police represses
union The history
of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers is marked by some
heady milestones, including their twin distinctions as both the first
and oldest trade union in the United States. However, on this day
in 1805, members of the Cordwainers were part of an ignoble event
that presaged labor's troubles with management over the next two centuries.
In the midst of a strike aimed at winning
better wages, the shoemakers were confronted by local police. Acting
under orders from a local judge, the officers not only stopped the
strike, but also arrested a number of the Cordwainers on charges of
criminal conspiracy. In particular, the strikers were accused of violating
an English common law that barred schemes aimed at forcing wage increases.
As it turned out, these charges, and the subsequent arrests, had stemmed
from the Cordwainers’ employers, who had appealed to the court to
intervene in the strike. The event marked the first, though hardly
the last time, that employers would turn to the judicial system to
help smash a strike.

^1793 First Catholic
priest ordained in the US
In Baltimore, Father Stephen Theodore Badin, 25, becomes the first
Catholic priest to be ordained in the United States. Badin is ordained
by Bishop John Carroll, an early advocate of US Catholicism, and appointed
to the Catholic mission in Kentucky. Badin afterward served as a frontier
missionary, and played a key role in establishing Catholicism in Kentucky,
Indiana and Tennessee during the early nineteenth century.
In British colonial America, there were few English-speaking Catholics
outside of Maryland, which was established in 1634 as a haven for
Roman Catholics persecuted in England. One hundred years later, John
Carroll was born in Baltimore into a prominent Catholic family. As
secondary Catholic education was forbidden by the British colonial
authorities, Carroll traveled to Europe, where he was ordained in
1769. Returning to America, he aided the Patriot cause during the
Revolutionary War, and in 1790 was chosen by the Vatican to become
the first bishop of the US Catholic Church.
Carroll supported the separation between church and state, and advocated
an autonomous US clergy that would elect its own bishops and carry
out its own training. In his early years as bishop, he endorsed the
use of English in the liturgy, and in 1793 presided over the first
ordination of a Catholic priest on US soil. Although the US Catholic
Church grew substantially under Carroll’s leadership, it was the mass
immigration of Catholics from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and
the Balkans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that made
Catholicism a major force in US religious life.

1790
First US copyright protection law enacted^top^
by Congress, and President George Washington signs the bill six days
later. Copyright protection extended for fourteen years, with renewal
rights granted only to living filers. Until 1981, software was protected
only by copyright law, not by patent law. As a result, the general
concepts and ideas behind software-such as the spreadsheet-were not
given the same measure of protection as hardware, making it much easier
to copy software ideas directly.

^1787 The US Constitutional
Convention begins Four
years after the United States won independence, fifty-five state delegates
(enough delegates for a quorum), including Revolutionary War hero George
Washington, convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to establish a new US
government. In 1786, defects in the
post-Revolutionary Articles of Confederation became apparent, such as the
lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce. Congress endorsed
a plan to draft a new constitution, and on 25 May 1787, the Constitutional
Convention begins its proceedings at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House.
The building, which is now known as Independence Hall, had earlier seen
the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the signing of the Articles
of Convention. On 17 September 1787,
after three months of debate moderated by convention president George Washington,
the new US constitution, which created a strong federal government with
an intricate system of checks and balances, was signed by thirty-eight of
the forty-one delegates present at the conclusion of the convention. As
dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it
was ratified by nine out of the thirteen states.
Beginning on 07 December, five states  Delaware, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut  ratified it in quick succession.
However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document as
it failed to reserve powers not delegated by the Constitution to the states,
unless specifically prohibited, and lacked constitutional protection of
basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press,
and the right to bear arms. In February
of 1788, a compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states
would agree to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would
be immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in
Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina. On 21 June
1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document and it
was subsequently agreed that government under the US Constitution would
begin on 04 March 1789. At the first
session of the US Congress, held in New York City on the appointed day,
only nine of twenty-two senators and thirteen of fifty-nine representatives
showed up to begin negotiations for the Constitution's amendment. Sixth
months later, the first Congress of the United States adopted twelve amendments
to the US Constitution  the Bill of Rights  and sent them to
the states for ratification. This action led to the eventual ratification
of the Constitution by the last of the thirteen original colonies: North
Carolina and Rhode Island. Four years
after the United States won its independence from England, 55 state delegates,
including George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, convene
in Philadelphia to compose a new US constitution. The Articles of Confederation,
ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781,
provided for a loose confederation of US states, which were sovereign in
most of their affairs. On paper, Congress  the central authority 
had the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war, and regulate currency,
but in practice these powers were sharply limited because Congress was given
no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops.
By 1786, it was apparent that the Union would soon break up if the Articles
of Confederation were not amended or replaced. Five states met in Annapolis,
Maryland, to discuss the issue, and all the states were invited to send
delegates to a new constitutional convention to be held in Philadelphia.
On 25 May 1787, delegates representing every state except Rhode Island
convened at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania State House for the Constitutional
Convention. The building, which is now known as Independence Hall, had earlier
seen the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the signing of
the Articles of Confederation. The assembly immediately discarded the idea
of amending the Articles of Confederation and set about drawing up a new
scheme of government. Revolutionary War hero George Washington, a delegate
from Virginia, was elected convention president.
During three months of debate, the delegates devised a brilliant federal
system characterized by an intricate system of checks and balances. The
convention was divided over the issue of state representation in Congress,
as more populated states sought proportional legislation, and smaller states
wanted equal representation. The problem was resolved by the Connecticut
Compromise, which proposed a bicameral legislature with proportional representation
in the lower house (House of Representatives) and equal representation of
the states in the upper house (Senate). On 17 September 1787, the Constitution
of the United States of America was signed by 38 of the 41 delegates present
at the conclusion of the convention. As dictated by Article VII, the document
would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the 13 states.
Beginning on 07 December, five states  Delaware, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut  ratified it in quick succession.
However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document, as
it failed to reserve undelegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional
protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion,
and the press. In February 1788, a
compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states would
agree to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would be
immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts,
followed by Maryland and South Carolina. On 21 June 1788, New Hampshire
became the ninth state to ratify the document, and it was subsequently agreed
that government under the US Constitution would begin on 04 March 1789.
On 25 September 1789, the first Congress of the United States adopted 12
amendments to the US Constitution  the Bill of Rights  and sent
them to the states for ratification. Ten of these amendments were ratified
in 1791. In November 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify
the US Constitution. Rhode Island, which opposed federal control of currency
and was critical of compromise on the issue of slavery, resisted ratifying
the Constitution until the US government threatened to sever commercial
relations with the state. On 29 May 1790, Rhode Island voted by two votes
to ratify the document, and the last of the original 13 colonies joined
the United States. Today the US Constitution is the oldest written constitution
in operation in the world.

^1660 The English
Restoration Under
invitation by leaders of the English Commonwealth, Charles II, the
exiled king of England, lands at Dover, England, to assume the throne
and end eleven years of military rule.
Prince of Wales at the time of the English Civil War, Charles fled
to France after Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians defeated King Charles
I’s Royalists in 1646. In 1649, Charles vainly attempted to save his
father’s life by presenting Parliament a signed blank sheet of paper,
thereby granting whatever terms were required. However, Oliver Cromwell
was determined to execute Charles I, and on 30 January 1649, the king
was beheaded in London. After
his father's death, Charles was proclaimed king of Scotland and parts
of Ireland and England, and traveled to Scotland to raise an army.
In 1651, he invaded England but was defeated by Cromwell at the Battle
of Worcester. Charles escaped to France, and later lived in exile
in Germany and then in the Spanish Netherlands.
After Cromwell’s death in 1658, the English republican experiment
faltered. Cromwell’s son Richard proved an ineffectual leader and
the public resented the strict Puritanism of England’s military rulers.
In 1660, in what became known as the
English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles and arranged
to restore him in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious
toleration for his former enemies. On 25 May 1660, Charles lands at
Dover, and four days later enters London in triumph. In the first
year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted
of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey
and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn.

2006 Ahmed Rachid; Nasser Ali Hatem; and Wissam Adel Odah;
murdered by Islamist terrorist in the afternoon in the Saidiya district
of Baghdad, Iraq, because they were wearing shorts. Rachid was the coach
of Iraq's olympic tennis team, of which the other two were members. —
(060528)2005 Gregory Scott Johnson [18 Feb 1965–],
by lethal injection in Indiana, for the 23 June 1985 beating and stomping
murder of Ruby Hutslar, 82, during burglary of her home which he then set
on fire. Johnson was denied a reprieve which he had sought in order to donate
his liver to his sister, 48, who suffers from nonalcoholic cirrhosis of
the liver. His heavy weight and hepatitis B antibodies make him an unsuitable
donor.2005 Sunil Dutt, born on 06 June 1929, is found
dead of an unexpected heart attack in his suburban Mumbai home. He was the
Sports Minister of India, had been elected to Parliament 5 times, but was
best known as an actor in 102 movies such as Mother India (1957),
Waqt (1965), Reshma Aur Shera, Geeta Mera Naam, Gumraah, Waqt,
Humraaz, Khandaan, Padosan, and Milan.2004 Ali
Abbas Mohammed, 13, by a car bomb near the roadside stall where
he and his father, Abbas Mohammed, 40, sold cigarettes, drinks, food, in
Baghdad, Iraq, near the Australian embassy.2003 Siegfried F.
Widera, 62, of head injuries as he was being taken to a hospital
after jumping from his hotel room's second story balcony in Mazatlán,
Mexico, when police were about to arrest him at the request of police in
California and Wisconsin, where he was accused of 42 counts of child molestation.
Widera was ordained a Catholic priest in 1967. In 1973 he was convicted
of sexual misconduct with an adolescent boy in the Milwaukee area and sentenced
to three years' probation. In 1976, he was moved from Milwaukee to Orange
County, California, where he was laicized in 1985 following more accusations
of sexual abuse of boys.2003 Father Antonio Ferrua SJ,
102, Vatican archeologist who was in charge of the 1940s excavation under
St. Peter's Basilica which discovered the tomb and bones of Saint Peter.2002 Palestinian newborn son of Fadia Mustafa, dies in
the morning after she was delayed by Israeli Army barriers on her way to
the hospital.2002 All 206 passengers and 19 crew members
aboard a China Airlines Flight C1611, a Boeing 747~200, which, at 15:30,
suddenly explodes at 10'000 m altitude, breaks up into four pieces, and
crashes in the Taiwan Straits north of the Penghu islands, about 50 km Taiwan's
coast, 20 minutes after taking off from Taipei bound for Hong Kong.2002:: Over 200 persons as a passenger train rams into the rear
of a freight train collide at the station in Moamba, Mozambique,
at about 05:00. Some 400 are injured.2001 Azzam Mizher,
24, by bomb in a package an arms dealer had left with him and other Palestinian
gunmen, in the Balata refugee camp, West Bank. Four others are wounded.
This brings the body count of the al-Aqsa intifada to to 478 Palestinians
and 85 Israelis.2001 Hussein Abu Nasser, 22, as his suicide-bomb-truck
exploded prematurely under gunfire from an Israeli army outpost
at the Netzarim junction, which it was approaching at high speed after bypassing
a roadblock. Nasser was a Hamas member and a student of Islamic culture
at the Islamic University in Gaza City, resident of the Jebaliya refugee
camp near Gaza City.2001 Two Islamic Jihad suicide bombers,
in Hadera, Israel, attack, as their car carrying explosives explodes (prematurely?)
alongside an Israeli bus near the central bus station.

^1979:: 273 persons
in the crash of Flight 191.
On Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, American Airlines Flight
191, a Los Angeles-bound DC-10, takes off at 3:03 PM CDT from Chicago-O'Hare
International airport with 271 aboard. As Flight 191 raises its front
during the initial stage of the take-off, an engine under the left
wing breaks off with its pylon assembly and falls to the runway. The
aircraft climbs to about 100 meters above the ground, and then begins
to spin to the left, continuing its leftward roll until the wings
are past the vertical position, with the nose pitched down below the
horizon. Moments later, the aircraft crashes into an open field about
800 meters from its takeoff point, killing all 271 people aboard and
two others in a nearby trailer park. It is the worst domestic air
crash in US history. Mechanics had ignored proper procedure in reattaching
one of the DC-10's 5900-kg wing engine and pylon assemblies after
servicing, and cracked the engine mount, which fatigued and broke,
allowing the engine to fall off.

^1871
Martyrs of the Commune of Paris. The
revolutionary party which took possession of the city after the siege
of Paris by the Prussians began, in the last days of March, to arrest
the priests and religious to whom personal character or official position
gave a certain prominence. No reason was given for these arbitrary
measures, except the hatred with which the leaders of the Commune
regarded the Catholic Church and her ministers. (2)
The Dominican Fathers, who perished on 25 May, belonged to the College
of Arcueil, close to Paris. Their superior was Father Captier, who
founded the college and under whose government it had prospered. With
him were for religious of his order: Fathers Bourard, Delhorme Cottrault,
and Chatagneret, and eight laymen, who belonged to the college, either
as professors or as servants. They were arrested on 19 May and
imprisoned in the outlying fort of Bicêtre, where they suffered from
hunger and thirst. On 25 May
they were transferred from Bicêtre to a prison within the city, situated
on the Avenue d'Italie. The excitement and anarchy that reigned in
Paris, and the insults that were levelled at the prisoners as they
were led from one prison to another prepared them for the worst; they
made their confession and prepared for death. Towards five in the
afternoon, they were commanded to go into the street one by one: Father
Captier, whose strong faith sustained his companion's courage, turned
to them: "Let us go, my friends, for the sake of God". The street
was filled with armed men who discharged their guns at the prisoners
as they passed. Father Captier was mortally wounded; his companions
fell here and there; some were killed on the spot; others lingered
on till their assassins put them out of their pain. Their dead bodies
remained for twenty-four hours on the ground, exposed to an insult;
only the next morning, when the troops from Versailles had conquered
the Commune, were they claimed by the victims' friends and conveyed
to Arcueil.

1699 Julien Franciscus de Geest, Flemish artist. 1689 Charles Erard (or Errard) de Bressuire fils, French
painter, draftsman, architect, and writer, born in 1606.1681
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, dramaturgo español.1648
Antoine Le Nain, French Baroque era painter born in 1588, who dies
just two days after his brother Louis
Le Nain [1505  23 May 1648], being survived by third brother
Mathieu
Le Nain le Chevalier [1607  20 Apr 1677]. All
three worked together and their individual works cannot be distinguished.
So you can get links to images and read a lot MORE
ON all 3 LE NAIN AT ART 4 MAY 23,
date of the death of Louis.1555 Regnier
Gemma “Frisius”, Frieslander mathematician born
on 08 December 1508. He applied his mathematical expertise to geography,
astronomy and map making. He became the leading theoretical mathematician
in the Low Countries.1261 Alexander IV (Rinaldo
dei Segni), 62, pope since 1254. Alexander was appointed cardinal deacon
(1227) and cardinal bishop of Ostia (1231) by his uncle Pope Gregory IX.
After becoming pope, Alexander followed the policies of his predecessor
Innocent IV: he continued war on Manfred, Emperor Frederick II's bastard
son (who was crowned king of Sicily in 1258), by excommunicating him and
investing Edmund, son of Henry III of England, with the papal fief of Sicily.
He supported the friars at Paris against the secular professors, extended
the Inquisition in France, worked for reunion between eastern Christians
and Rome, and attempted in vain to organize a crusade against the Tatars.1085 St Gregory VII, pope (1073-1085)

1968
The Gateway Arch, part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
in St. Louis, was dedicated.1927 Robert Ludlum spy
novelist (Bourne Identity)1922 Enrico Berlinguer,
dirigente comunista italiano.1921 Jack Steinberger,
estadounidense nacido en Alemania, Premio Nobel de Física en 1988.1889 Igor Sikorsky developed a working helicopter.1882 Gottardo Guido Segantini, Swiss artist who died in
1974.1879 William Maxwell Aitken Beaverbrook, financiero
y político canadiense.1846 Gustave Jean Jacquet,
French artist who died in 1909.1841 Eugène-Samuel
Grasset, Swiss-born French illustrator, decorative artist, and
printmaker, who died on 23 October 1917. — more1840 Cynara, fictional narrator of The Wind
Done Gone. (the year is my guess). Cynara [picture >]
is a mulatto offspring of the white master and a black mammy on the Georgian
plantation 'Tata,' and tells her story of living in the South after the
Civil War in 1873. She is the half-sister of 'Other' (Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone With the Wind), whose former husband is 'R'. (corresponds
to Rhett Butler). The couple 'Dreamy Gentleman' and 'Mealy Mouth' correspond
to Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall,
is a parody of Gone With the Wind, to give the Blacks' point of
view. On 25 May 2001 an appeals court overturned a lower court's decision
which had imposed prior restraint on the publication of The Wind Done
Gone.
1828 Karl
Mikhaillovich Peterson, Russian mathematician who died on 19
April 1881. He worked mainly in differential geometry. A class of surfaces
is named after him. Author of Über Curven und Flächen (1868).1817 Cornelis Springer, Dutch painter and printmaker who
died on 20 (18?) February 1891. —MORE
ON SPRINGER AT ART 4 MAY
with links to images.

^1803Ralph
Waldo Emerson, lecturer, writer, poet, editor,
philosopher, who died on 27 April 1882. He was the leading exponent
of New England Transcendentalism of writers and philosophers, a part
of the 19th century Romantic movement. They adopted an idealistic
system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all
creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight
(over logic and experience) for the revelation of the deepest truths.
Their eclectic sources included German transcendentalism (especially
as communicated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge [21 Oct 1772 – 25
Jul 1834] and Thomas Carlyle [04 Dec 1795 – 05 Feb 1881), Platonism
and Neoplatonism, the Indian and Chinese scriptures, and the writings
of such mystics as Emanuel Swedenborg [29 Jan 1688 – 29 Mar
1772] and Jakob Böhme [1575 – 21 Nov 1624]. — Ralph
Waldo Emerson was the son of the Reverend William Emerson [06
May 1759 – 12 May 1811],
a Unitarian clergyman and friend of the arts. The son inherited the
profession of divinity, which had attracted all his ancestors in direct
line from Puritan days. The family of his mother, Ruth Haskins [09
Nov 1768 – 16 Nov 1853], was strongly Anglican, and among influences
on Emerson were such Anglican writers and thinkers as Ralph Cudworth
[1617 – 26 Jun 1688], Robert Leighton [1611 – 25 Jun 1684],
Jeremy Taylor [bap. 15 Aug 1613 – 13 Aug 1667], and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. After William Emerson
father died, his son was left largely to the intellectual care of
his aunt Mary Moody Emerson [25 Aug 1774 – 01 May 1863], who
took her duties seriously. In 1812 Emerson entered the Boston Public
Latin School, where his juvenile verses were encouraged and his literary
gifts recognized. In 1817 he entered Harvard College, where he began
his journals, which may be the most remarkable record of the “march
of Mind” to appear in the United States. He graduated in 1821 and
taught school while preparing for part-time study in the Harvard Divinity
School. Though Emerson was licensed to preach in the Unitarian community
in 1826, illness slowed the progress of his career, and he was not
ordained to the Unitarian ministry at the Second Church, Boston, until
1829. There he began to win fame as a preacher, and his position seemed
secure. On 10 (30?) September 1829 he married Ellen Louisa Tucker
[1808 – 08 Feb 1831]. After she died of tuberculosis, his grief
drove him to question his beliefs and his profession. But in the previous
few years Emerson had already begun to question Christian doctrines.
His brother William Emerson [31 Jul 1801 – 13 Sep 1868], who
had gone to Germany, had acquainted him with the new biblical criticism
and the doubts that had been cast on the historicity of miracles.
Emerson's own sermons, from the first, had been unusually free of
traditional doctrine and were instead a personal exploration of the
uses of spirit, showing an idealistic tendency and announcing his
personal doctrine of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Indeed, his
sermons had divested Christianity of all external or historical supports
and made its basis one's private intuition of the universal moral
law and its test a life of virtuous accomplishment. Unitarianism had
little appeal to him by now, and on 28 October 1832 he resigned from
the ministry. When Emerson left
the church, he was in search of a more certain conviction of God than
that granted by the historical evidences of miracles. He wanted his
own revelation, i.e., a direct and immediate experience of God. On
25 December 1832, he left on a trip to Europe. In Paris he saw Antoine-Laurent
de Jussieu's collection of natural specimens arranged in a developmental
order that confirmed his belief in man's spiritual relation to nature.
In England he paid memorable visits to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William
Wordsworth [07 Apr 1770 – 23 Apr 1850], and (on 26 Aug 1833)
Thomas Carlyle. After returning home on 09 October 1833, he began
to write Nature. He gave his first lecture, "The Uses of
Natural History", at the Masonic Temple, Boston, on 05 November 1833
and soon established himself as a popular and influential lecturer.
By 1834 he had found a permanent home in Concord, Massachusetts, and
on 14 September 1835 he married Lydia Jackson [20 Sep 1802 –
13 Nov 1892] and settled into the kind of quiet domestic life that
was essential to his work. The
1830s saw Emerson become an independent literary man. During this
decade his own personal doubts and difficulties were increasingly
shared by other intellectuals. Before the decade was over his personal
manifestos, Nature, “The American Scholar” and the Divinity
School Address (15 Jul 1838), had rallied together a group that came
to be called the Transcendentalists, of which he was popularly acknowledged
the spokesman. Emerson helped initiate Transcendentalism by publishing
anonymously in Boston on 09 September 1836 a book of 95 pages entitled
Nature. Having found the answers to his spiritual doubts,
he formulated his essential philosophy, and almost everything he ever
wrote afterward was an extension, amplification, or amendment of the
ideas he first affirmed in Nature.
Emerson's religious doubts had lain deeper than his objection to the
Unitarians' retention of belief in the historicity of miracles. He
was also deeply unsettled by the mechanistic conception of the universe
according to the physics of Newton [04 Jan 1643 – 31 Mar 1727]
and by the psychology of sensation of Locke [29 Aug 1632 – 28
Oct 1704] that he had learned at Harvard. Emerson felt that there
was no place for free will in the chains of mechanical cause and effect
that rationalist philosophers conceived the world as being made up
of. This world could be known only through the senses rather than
through thought and intuition; it determined men physically and psychologically;
and yet it made them victims of circumstance, beings whose superfluous
mental powers were incapable of truly ascertaining reality.
Emerson reclaimed an idealistic philosophy from this dead end of 18th-century
rationalism by once again asserting the human ability to transcend
the materialistic world of sense experience and facts and become conscious
of the all-pervading spirit of the universe and the potentialities
of human freedom. God could best be found by looking inward into one's
own self, one's own soul, and from such an enlightened self-awareness
would in turn come freedom of action and the ability to change one's
world according to the dictates of one's ideals and conscience. Human
spiritual renewal thus proceeds from the individual's intimate personal
experience of his own portion of the divine “oversoul,” which is present
in and permeates the entire creation and all living things, and which
is accessible if only a person takes the trouble to look for it. Emerson
enunciates how “reason,” which to him denotes the intuitive awareness
of eternal truth, can be relied upon in ways quite different from
one's reliance on “understanding”, i.e., the ordinary gathering of
sense-data and the logical comprehension of the material world. Emerson's
doctrine of self-sufficiency and self-reliance naturally springs from
his view that the individual need only look into his own heart for
the spiritual guidance that has hitherto been the province of the
established churches. The individual must then have the courage to
be himself and to trust the inner force within him as he lives his
life according to his intuitively derived precepts.
Obviously these ideas are far from original, and it is clear that
Emerson was influenced in his formulation of them by his previous
readings of Neoplatonist philosophy, the works of Coleridge and other
European Romantics, the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, Hindu philosophy,
and other sources. What set Emerson apart from others who were expressing
similar Transcendentalist notions were his abilities as a polished
literary stylist able to express his thought with vividness and breadth
of vision. His philosophical exposition has a peculiar power and an
organic unity whose cumulative effect was highly suggestive and stimulating
to his contemporary readers' imaginations.
In a 31 August 1837 lecture entitled “The American Scholar”, Emerson
described the resources and duties of the new liberated intellectual
that he himself had become. This address was in effect a challenge
to the Harvard intelligentsia, warning against pedantry, imitation
of others, traditionalism, and scholarship unrelated to life. Emerson's
“Address at Divinity College,” Harvard University, in 1838 was another
challenge, this time directed against a lifeless Christian tradition,
especially Unitarianism as he had known it. He dismissed religious
institutions and the divinity of Jesus as failures in man's attempt
to encounter deity directly through the moral principle or through
an intuited sentiment of virtue. This address alienated many, left
him with few opportunities to preach, and resulted in his being ostracized
by Harvard for many years. Young disciples, however, joined the informal
Transcendental Club (founded in 1836) and encouraged him in his activities.
In Emerson helped launch The Dial
(1st issue 01 Jul 1840), first edited by Margaret Fuller [23
May 1810 – 19 Jul 1850] and later by himself, thus providing
an outlet for the new ideas Transcendentalists were trying to present
to the US. Though short-lived, the magazine provided a rallying point
for the younger members of the school. From his continuing lecture
series, he gathered his Essays into two volumes (1841, 1844),
which made him internationally famous. In his first volume of Essays
Emerson consolidated his thoughts on moral individualism and preached
the ethics of self-reliance, the duty of self-cultivation, and the
need for the expression of self. The second volume of Essays
shows Emerson accommodating his earlier idealism to the limitations
of real life; his later works show an increasing acquiescence to the
state of things, less reliance on self, greater respect for society,
and an awareness of the ambiguities and incompleteness of genius.
His Representative Men (1849)
contained biographies of Plato [427-347bc], Swedenborg, Montaigne
[28 Feb 1533 – 23 Sep 1592], Shakespeare [26 Apr 1564 –
23 Apr 1616], Napoléon [15 Aug 1769 – 05
May 1821], and Goethe [28 Aug 1749 – 22 Mar 1832]. In English
Traits he gave a character analysis of a people from which he
himself stemmed. The Conduct of Life (1860), Emerson's most
mature work, reveals a developed humanism together with a full awareness
of man's limitations. It may be considered as partly confession. Emerson's
collected Poems (published on 25 Dec 1846) were supplemented
by others in May-Day and Other Pieces (1867), and the two
volumes established his reputation as a major US poet.
By the 1860s Emerson's reputation in the US was secure, for time was
wearing down the novelty of his rebellion as he slowly accommodated
himself to society. He continued to give frequent lectures, but the
writing he did after 1860 shows a waning of his intellectual powers.
A new generation knew only the old Emerson and had absorbed his teaching
without recalling the acrimony it had occasioned. After his death
Emerson was transformed into the Sage of Concord, shorn of his power
as a liberator and enrolled among the worthies of the very tradition
he had set out to destroy. Emerson's
voice and rhetoric sustained the faith of thousands in the US lecture
circuits between 1834 and the US Civil War. He served as a cultural
middleman through whom the aesthetic and philosophical currents of
Europe passed to the US, and he led his countrymen during the burst
of literary glory known as the US renaissance (1835–1865). As a principal
spokesman for Transcendentalism, the US tributary of European Romanticism,
Emerson gave direction to a religious, philosophical, and ethical
movement that above all stressed belief in the spiritual potential
of every man.

1785 William Frederick Witherington, Britist painter who
died on 10 April 1865. — more
with an image and links to more images.1764 Jan Frans van
Dael, Flemish painter and lithographer who died on 20 March 1840.
— MORE
ON VAN DAEL AT ART 4 MAY
with links to images.1749 Gregorio Funes, primer
historiador del Río de la Plata.1616 Carlo Carlino
Dolci, Florentine painter who died on 17 January 1686. MORE
ON DOLCI AT ART 4 MAY with
links to images.

Thoughts for the day:If your work speaks for
itself, don't interrupt.
If your work interrupts, speak for yourself.
A historian is a prophet in reverse.  Friedrich
von Schlegel, German diplomat and writer [10 Mar 1772 – 12 Jan 1829].A historian is a prophet who has suffered reverses.
A historian is like a car driver who looks only in the rear-view mirror.